This year's battle has been between two deeply flawed men: George Bush, who has been a radical, transforming president but who has never seemed truly up to the job, let alone his own ambitions for it; and John Kerry, who often seems to have made up his mind conclusively about something only once, and that was 30 years ago. But on November 2nd, Americans must make their choice, as must The Economist. It is far from an easy call, especially against the backdrop of a turbulent, dangerous world. But, on balance, our instinct is towards change rather than continuity: Mr Kerry, not Mr Bush.

I've just had 3 seconds of fame... I was on Fox 25 News at 10 in Boston. Years of preparation and keeping up on current events paid off. Coming out of the drug store this afternoon the anchor was there with a camera guy. My big question ... did I know the security features on the new $20 bill? I rattled off a couple.. the iridescent ink, the little yellow 20's in the background on the back. I can at least be happy that I was the only person on the street that knew any. Quite a moment of glory.

My previous claim to fame was riding in the trunk of an elephant at the Hong Kong zoo at age 5. (I was the only blonde kid there.) Unfortunately, the TV news was after my bedtime, and they hadn't invented VCR's yet, so I never got to see that one. I now have my big 3 second on TiVo, so I can watch it anytime :-). I never knew I moved my head so much when I talk..

I love the Economist more than I can say. You shoud really read it. They really tell it like it is, much more than the rest of the media. This week they had this to say on Joe Lieberman's chances in the campaign:

Mr Lieberman even has a strategy for turning his principles into votes. He knows he has no chance in Iowa and New Hampshire. But he hopes that his national name-recognition and moderate politics will rescue him thereafter. His campaign is particularly hopeful about what it calls “Tidal Wave Tuesday”—the seven primaries on February 3rd that bring large numbers of southerners and westerners to the polls. Mr Lieberman is holding his own in South Carolina, where four Democrats are just about even, and is ahead in the most recent poll in Arizona (admittedly taken back in July). The hope is that these voters will act as a firewall against the Dean insurgency, and persuade the Democratic Party to rally around its most electable candidate.

To be a little more precise, Mr Lieberman is gambling on three things that may well happen. The first is that Mr Dean succeeds in crushing Mr Gephardt in Iowa and John Kerry in New Hampshire. The next is that the Democratic establishment decides that Mr Lieberman is a safer bet for the ABD (Anyone But Dean) vote than young John Edwards, an inexperienced southern senator. And third, that Mr Dean blows up. If he continues to run as well as he has so far, he will be unstoppable. But if he makes a terrible gaffe—Mr Dean has a temper on him—then he might just create an opening for a more conventional candidate.

There has a been an uproar of criticism of DARPA by the Senate over their recent terrorism futures market. DARPA is the goverment agency that funds speculative research, most famously including the internet.

[DARPA's] funding decisions are determined not by peer review, but by the whims of programme managers, usually seconded from academia or industry. Their sole guidance is DARPA's mission of backing imaginative, creative and high-risk research in the interest of the defence of the United States. Scientists who capture the imagination of a programme manager can gain support for projects that would be dismissed by other agencies as too speculative to win public funding.

This freewheeling approach has yielded some big payoffs, such as the radar-absorbing skin of 'stealth' aircraft, and a host of critical Internet technologies. Today, the agency is pioneering the development of spintronics and quantum computing, which together could transform information technology. It has also extended its innovative reach into systems neuroscience, and other areas of biology.

The U.S. needs a program like DARPA. I applied for a National Science Foundation grant last year for my project. I was doing things in a non-traditional way. It was turned down with a "we don't think that will work." I'm disappointed to see that the NSF has come to only fund research that is sure to work. (See my earlier post on how I do research, for more on that topic.)

We need a way for more speculative basic research to get funded. In this country, DARPA is often that route. At a conference on goverment funding I attended, the DARPA woman said that they can get you a check in two weeks if they like what you're doing. That's pretty amazing compared to the NSF's once a year grant cycle.